bosses

Prof. Samuel Cuthbert’s take-down of the performance review

by amiel · Jan 6, 2014

In an excellent interview with Mark Graban, Professor Samuel Cuthbert of UCLA has this to say about the performance review:

Performance reviews, in my mind, are a dishonest, fraudulent practice carried out and justified on grounds I have no idea, they never hold any water and they work against everybody.

It sounds at first like hyperbole…that is, until you realize that he has been studying this the performance review for decades and has quite a case to make. Here is my summary: [Read more…] about Prof. Samuel Cuthbert’s take-down of the performance review

Accountability and reliable promises, pt. 3

by amiel · Dec 16, 2013

Part 3 in a 3-part series

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we used the example of nurses filling foam canisters in hospitals (to increase the odds of hand washing that protects patients from infection) to demonstrate what it takes to build accountability in an organization. Accountability requires promises, which in turn require effective requests (or offers) and acceptance of those requests. If the goal is for everyone involved to follow a similar process, i.e. standardized work, then it’s important that they all explicitly promise to do this. But what do you do if a nurse isn’t following standardized work? According to Mark Graban, the first thing to do is to ask why. He proposes asking the following about a surgeon who fails to follow “universal protocol” before a surgical case, but the same applies to nurses who fail to refill canisters.

We can ask:

Is it a case where the person CAN’T do the work properly?
- Do they not know how? This might be a systemic training problem. The individual can’t be held accountable for that.
- Does the person not have the right resources? Maybe they WANT to do it right, but they just can’t. Leadership needs to help eliminate those barriers.
Is it a case where the person WON’T do the work properly?
- Is the situation one where the person truly has a choice and they made a bad choice?

Accountability and reliable promises, pt. 2

by amiel · Dec 16, 2013

Part 2 in a 3-part series

Read part 1

What does it mean to have accountability? As we observed in an earlier post, piggybacking off of Mark Graban, if a hospital manager expect nurses to be responsible for filling foam canisters to increase the odds of hand washing to protect patients, there needs to be an explicit promise between that manager and the nurses. Such a promise requires both a clear request (or offer) and an acceptance. Promise = Request + Acceptance.

Now, what can we say about the components of an effective request or offer? Let’s make explicit what was partly implicit in the above example. An effective request or offer consists of the following:

Clear conditions for satisfaction. There needs to be a shared understanding of what it means to restock a canister.
Clear timeframe or deadline. What days and what times of day will the nurse restock the canister—or at least check to see if it needs restocking?
A specific speaker. What do we mean by this? If a vague pronouncement comes out from “management” about who is responsible for restocking the canisters, there is not a specific speaker. The nurse doesn’t have anybody to respond to (by accepting, declining, counter-offering, or promising to promise). Another way that a speaker can be “missing” is if a manager holds uncommunicated expectations; they want the nurses to refill the canisters, and maybe even mention it in passing, but never actually make a request.
A specific listener. On the other hand, let’s say a particular manager makes the request but communicates it vaguely to a full team of nurses. Now, we have a specific speaker but not a specific listener.
A shared “background of obviousness.” This is a fancy way of saying that when the manager says “restock the canisters in the middle hallway”, both the manager and the nurse understand which canisters these are and which hallway is the middle hallway.

In the zone…with the boss

by amiel · Oct 15, 2013

Recently, I sat down with a leader I’ve been coaching and his boss to discuss the leader’s progress in raising his game. The leader–let’s call him Bill–was in the zone: confident, visionary, and fully engaged. He spoke with conviction, asked questions with curiosity, and had three times more “executive presence” than in any of our previous 2-on-1 meetings. As we walked out afterwards, I said to him, “Wow, you were on fire!”

What’s remarkable isn’t that Bill did this–after all, he is a visionary with a passion for ideas–but that he did it in the presence of his boss.

And Bill isn’t alone. Have you ever noticed how often talented people lose their mojo when talking with their bosses? Why is this? And what allows people to buck the trend and stay in the zone? [Read more…] about In the zone…with the boss